black ink bleeding
by one hundred sleepless nights
Summary: Spare me the rescue. —Josh-centric.


**dedication:** to soul sisters, because you keep me sane. nat, this one's for you.

**black ink bleeding**

Josh hates hospitals.

They're ghost towns, with white walls, white tiled floors, white linen, _whitewhitewhite_. The smell of them, all cleaning product and rubbing alcohol and despair, makes bile rise up his throat, acidic, and there's the strangest, revolting feeling of nostalgia that comes over him. Its level upon level of death, stacked up in a solemn hellhole where even the living barely survive.

They're places that tear families apart, induce vomiting and crush fragile hearts.

It's curious though; they're all he can think of nowadays, hospitals. He sits on the edge of his bed, head bowed, dead eyes glaring blankly at the wall.

It's November.

It's been a year.

It's only numbness inside of him, now.

x

He's drunk, and stumbling, twirling the bottle of vodka between clumsy fingers.

Josh squints at the hospital through slit-eyes and a haze; stares and stares until his vision burns and distorts, but there isn't really anything to stare at.

He brings the half-empty bottle to his swollen lips with a shaky hand and swallows, lost in fragmented promises. He focuses on the bitterness that he's not really tasting.

Josh tosses his head back and laughs, a hysterical one, eyes laced with tears and shame and remorse. It's fruitless; he'll never really forget. It's scribbled on the back of his rubber eyelids in burning crimson, carved into his brain and pumped into his veins.

He swears he can hear a heart monitor sounding somewhere, flat-lining. There's a heartbeat like a serenade of rain, like a metronome; he wishes it wasn't his.

_Badum. Badum. Badum._

There's fuzz in his head, rushing-ringing in his ears.

He lets himself tip backwards, colliding with the cement wall, head smacking against the corner where wall met wall. Red flashes in his eyes and he almost smiles; red was such an angry colour and _fuck_, if he wasn't angry. Josh's eyes roll to the back of his head—he sees empty shadows and spiderweb memories there—, and he concentrates on razor edges and insanity and her, her, her.

Always her.

_(Mom)._

He hisses, teeth bared, because the alcohol is beginning to fail at stifling the pain and it's almost agonizing the way he feels inhuman, unmade and—

And—

And—

Josh only manages a sloppy, unstable leer, a lazy flip of his mouth, before the high begins and he lifts off the ground.

x

In his dream, Josh is runningrunning_running_ through endless corridors, dodging the darkness that chase him relentlessly, mocking and taunting and sneering.

It's all straight lines and sloped angles; nowhere to hide.

There's black, black, black and he doesn't know how he'll make it out alive and _does he even want to anymore?_

Somewhere, deep in his consciousness, he notices singing; sweet, lifeless notes. It echoes through the building unnervingly, mingling with laughter, high-pitched and innocent, warping and morphing.

Hopelessness.

Everything is artificial, sickening. Mindless doodles are scrawled messily on the walls and the essence of blood is in the air, chokingly muggy.

In his dream, Josh can't escape.

x

When his feet skim the Earth again, everything is dark and sharp and Josh wonders if he is dead. There's a chill that has seeped into his pores, bolting to his bones, his spine. He can taste the metallic of pennies on his unnaturally vibrant red lips.

He barely makes it to his home that is not a home anymore; it hasn't been for a while, just the place he's lived all his life now, before he collapses. There's a prickling crawling up and down his legs like frostbite. Josh counts down the seconds until the day is over; _tick tock_.

There's an unnatural squealing and an abrupt jerking and the revolting smell of melting rubber. His seat belt cuts deep into his shoulder and the shriek-grind of metal twisting and agonized screaming, screaming, _screaming_.

The leather seats are stained with vermillion; red, red, red everywhere.

_Ticktockticktockticktock._

It's suddenly suffocating in Josh's bedroom (prison); there's no air to breathe, no rope to grasp onto.

All of a sudden, he's screaming obscenities to the ceiling, the sky, because they couldn't save her, they couldn't, and now she's gone. It's crazed, animalistic, frantic, and reverberates, shaking the room, the bed, and his teeth chatter. He shivers, and it won't stop, _oh god_, why won't it stop, and there's cold, cold, cold all over the place.

_I'm sorry,_ Josh tries to say, but the words are thick and wrong and foreign on his tongue so he settles for mouthing them. He grits his teeth until there's a throbbing in his jaw, but that's alright because he deserves to feel pain, he's toxic, poisonous, and happy endings are for fucking fairy tales.

_Tick. Tock._

When he blinks, his eyelashes are wet.

x

It is dawn when Josh wakes up, silently. The sky is painted with swirls of rose and tangerine and cerulean, blended; it's gorgeous.

It makes him feel sick.

Josh only sees things in shades of gray, nowadays.

It's cold and morose, outside. The grass is dewy under his dragging feet. The gravestones are in perfect symmetry; it's frustrating and almost eerie.

He hates coming to the cemetery.

Josh never brings flowers; that'd be too close to acceptance, _too goddamn close_. Instead, he brings his regrets and guilt and failures. The underside of his tongue is sour and his Adam's apple is tightening in his throat while the world blurs, but no, he won't cry, refuses to even.

Crying seems to be the only thing Josh has been doing recently. He's all dried out. Shrivelled. Withered.

_Finished_.

Josh weighs the bottle in his hand without looking. "I…I didn't bring enough alcohol," he whispers to himself brokenly, crumbling, shattered.

He was beyond saving. There was already a grave for him, one he had dug himself, one that was one foot too wide and two souls too shallow.

All that was left now's booze and fuckups and running away.

Josh gazes at the headstone through closed eyes and raises the glass bottle up in the air, saluting. He drinks—to bullshit and lies and worthlessness. And most of all, to her.

_365 more days._

It's a strangled, childish sound that he releases into the cool grass, forehead to the ground.

_Mom. Mommy._

The sun creeps up to waltz with the sky, and Josh grieves for the mother he had lost with himself, not long enough ago, never long enough ago. It is breathtaking, ethereal, and Josh grieves for being alive.

He can hear the screams again. The screams and breaking glass and the singing, the lullaby. He can hear the honey smooth melody warp into the monsters inside his head and the pain, it hurts, _goddamnit_, it hurts, and the blood splatters and then—

There is no noise.

* * *

omg, babygirl, i love you so much. happy birthday, hope it's a good one!

okay so repetition, weu, and i don't even know what this is, don't look at me.


End file.
